Angelus
by aadarshinah
Summary: Jeannie learns the truth about what her brother's been up to for the USAF. #24 in the Ancient!John 'Verse. McShep. Jeannie/Kaleb
1. Pars Una

Angelus  
An Ancient!John Story

* * *

Pars Una

* * *

Jeannie is in the middle of making cupcakes when the doorbell rings. She glances at the oven timer - four-and-a-half minutes until the next batch is ready - and wipes her hands on her apron before answering the door.

"Hello," she says cautiously when she sees a blonde woman in military dress blues on her porch with two of Vancouver's finest. "Can I help you with something?"

"Jeanne Miller?"

"Yes." She swallows audibly. There's only one reason she can think of that an American Air Force officer might show up uninvited like this on her very Canadian doorstep and the very thought of it has her gripping the doorframe tightly. "Is my brother alright?" She and Mer might not be the closest, but they've started getting to know each other again since his own unexpected visit last summer. Admittedly, most of that's John's doing - she's been emailing her brother's boyfriend on a fairly regular basis, - but it's still better than what they had before. She can't lose him now.

The officer gives her a sympathetic smile. "I apologise. I realise how this must seem, but I assure you that, to the best of my knowledge, your brother is just fine. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter of the United States Air Force and I'm actually here with regards to a different matter."

Jeannie glances towards the kitchen. As important as this is, she just doesn't have the time to bake more cupcakes if something happens to these. "I see... Do you mind if we talk about this inside? I'm kind of in the middle of making cupcakes for my daughter's school bake sale, so..."

"Yes, of course." Colonel Carter dismisses the two VPD officers and follows her into the kitchen. "Rodney's never mentioned anything about having a niece."

"You know Meredith?"

"Meredith?"

"It's his name. Meredith Rodney McKay. He prefers 'Rodney' for some reason," Jeannie sighs, not really understanding it herself, and pulls the last batch of cupcakes out of the oven and setting them to cool on the stovetop. Several dozen are already awaiting frosting in their yellow and blue paper cups on the kitchen island.

"That's brilliant," the Colonel laughs, honest and true. "But, yes, I know your brother. I've worked with him on several occasions over the years. We're in the same field, academically," she elaborates at Jeannie's raised eyebrow.

"Engineering or physics?"

"Physics. Which is actually what brings me here."

"Oh?"

"Colonel Sheppard forwarded me a copy of the math proof you sent him several weeks ago. I must tell you, it's impressive work. Is it true you did the original calculations in finger paint?"

Jeannie blushes as she riffles through the knife drawer, looking for something to ice the cupcakes with. "Inspiration struck," she admits, grabbing a pair of spatulas before turning around. "I got caught up in the math. It happens sometimes."

"I understand. It happens to me all the time. I once-" she catches herself. "Well, the details aren't important. What 'is' is that your proof has some startling real world applications that we'd like you to consult with the United States military on. You would, of course, be compensated generously for your time."

Jeannie hands the Colonel a spatula and pushes the bowl of icing into the centre of the kitchen island. It's simple buttercream - homemade, with real ingredients instead of five kinds of chemicals someone brewed up in a lab somewhere just so a box can sit on a shelf for a while longer, just like the cupcakes.

"I fail to see what real world application a trans-universal matter bridge could have, even for the US military."  
The corner of Colonel Carter's tongue peeks out of her mouth as ices one of the cupcakes with, well, nothing short of military-grade precision. "I can go into more detail if you'd like, but first you'll need to sign a non-discloseure agreement."

"I'm sorry, Colonel-"

"Call me Sam, please." The corner of her mouth twitches. "We're practically family."

Jeannie's brow wrinkles, but she chooses not to question this odd assertion for the moment. Instead she continues, "Well then, I'm sorry Sam, but I believe that getting proprietary about our research and ideas is everything that's wrong with science today. If there's 'any' value to my proof, it's that it'll spark an idea in someone else. The last thing I'm going to do is sign away my rights, least of all to the US military."

To her surprise, Sam nods understandingly and ices another cupcake. "Normally I'd agree with you, but we're talking about some pretty exceptional circumstances here. There are some things that we are simply not prepared to tell the general public about at this time. Or that the general public is ready to hear. And while steps 'are' being taken to change that, the process would go much more smoothly if you agree to help us now."

"I'm sorry, but no."

Sam bites her lower lip and sets down her spatula. "Would it help any to know that you'd be working with your brother and Colonel Sheppard?"

"My brother's a genius and John's a Millennium Prize winner. I'm sure they can figure it out without me."

"While I'm sure that's true, it would be a lot easier - and go a lot faster - with your assistance."

Jeannie 'hmms' and ices another cupcake.

Sam sighs and pulls out a cellphone, sucking the icing off the ball of her thumb while she waits for it to connect. "Walter," she says when it finally does, "can you have Doctor McKay brought to his sister's house in Vancouver?" There's a pause. "Yes. As soon as possible." And another. "Promise him we'll have him back in under twenty-four hours. Oh, and try to make sure the IOA doesn't know he's coming. We don't want to open that can of worms quite yet if we can help it. Thanks, Walter." She snaps the phone shut. "Rodney should be here within the hour."

"You think bringing my big brother into this is going to change anything?"

Sam blinks, as if the thought that it wouldn't had never occurred to her, and picks up her spatula.

The Colonel has iced her way through three cupcakes before curiosity gets the better of Jeannie's anger. "I thought," she says, "that Mer was stationed somewhere in Afghanistan."

"God, no. Is that what he told you?"

"I read the article in 'Time' about John when the CMI announced he'd solved the Riemann Hypothesis. It said that John was in some dangerous part of Afghanistan, and where one is, the other's not far behind."

"Well," Sam muses, "you're not wrong about the second part."

Jeannie frowns. "Why would they lie about where he's posted?"

"It's complicated."

"How so?"

"That's complicated too."

Sighing, "What 'can' you tell me then?"

"Without signing the non-disclosure agreement? Not much."

"Alright, what about you?"

"Me?" Sam repeats, surprised.

"If we're going to be sitting here for an hour waiting for my brother to show up from whatever not-Afghanistan place you've got him tucked up away in," Jeannie points out, gesturing between them with her spatula, "you might as well tell me something about yourself. Unless," she smirks, "I've got to sign a non-disclosure agreement for that as well?"

"It's the price you pay."

"For what? Being a lead scientist on the next Manhattan Project?"

"You forget," Sam says, setting an iced cupcake carefully on the tray before carefully selecting another, "that the Manhattan Project didn't just build the weapon which ended the deadliest war in human history and saved the lives of countless Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen. It also gave us atomic power, spurred advancements in nuclear medicine, and left behind a series of national laboratories, without which our current way of life would not be possible."

"Yes, because that excuses killing two hundred thousand people."

"Best estimates for Operation Downfall, the Allied plan to invade Japan, would've resulted in five hundred thousand American and six million Japanese deaths. That's the 'cold calculus of war' for you." She says it like she believes it - not in the fanatical, jingoistic way she's seen so much of since the towers fell, but with the quiet devotion of a soldier who'd do anything for the men and women fighting at her side. It's a tone she expects from war-weary veterans in the movies than a military scientist whose probably never seen a day of fighting in her life.

It doesn't change anything though.

"And how many people will this weapon you want to use my proof to build kill?"

"We don't want it for a weapon."

"Then why all the secrecy?"

"Sign the non-disclosure agreement and I'll tell you."

Jeannie looks at the dark grey folder sitting next to the plate of already frosted cupcakes. It can't hold more than five or six pages, for all it was delivered to her by a lieutenant colonel. "This form, it's just a non-disclosure agreement?"

"Yes."

"And it doesn't sign me into some sort of intellectual slavery to the US military?"

"Different forms. I don't have them with me - you have to sign the non-disclosure agreement before you can even read them."

"Alright." She sets down her spatula and picks up a pen. It may be a mistake, but she's never considered curiosity to be a fatal sin. "Where do I sign?"

"Just the places marked with the little post-it flags," Sam tells her, carefully peeling the paper off one of the just-iced cupcakes. "Mind if I...?"

"No. Sure. I mean, go right ahead." She signs her name in four places and pushes the folder towards the Colonel when she finishes. "So, what do you want to use my proof for?"

"The holy grail of high-energy physics: drawing zero point energy from a parallel space time without fear of creating exotic particles."

Jeannie blinks. Not what she'd expected. (Not that she knows what she expected, but it certainly wasn't anything like that.) "And Mer? Where are he and John stationed?"

Sam wipes stray frosting off her upper lip before answering with a wide grin, "The Lost City of Atlantis, on a planet some three million light years away in the Pegasus Galaxy - the irregular dwarf one, not the spheroidal. As far as we can tell, there's nothing of interest there."

"I see," Jeannie says faintly, feeling her blood sugar plummet. "I think I'll have a cupcake now myself."

* * *

The bed in their new suite shifts underneath him as John kisses a wet trail up his chest.

"God," Rodney groans.

"Not exactly," he chuckles, detouring to swirl his tongue around his left nipple.

"You think you're so funny."

"I think I'm hilarious," John says before leaning in to kiss the protest off his lips. It's a kiss that makes no pretence of chastity, with John quickly licking his way inside and pressing him into the bed as he ravages his mouth. Rodney can still taste himself on John's tongue, but that's quickly lost beneath the Ancient's own flavours - sea salt and root liquorice, cinnamon and nutmeg. Old flavours, ancient flavours, ones John still favours if given half a choice about the matter. Tastes that haven't change since he Ascended.

He's panting when John finally remembers he needs to breathe. "Keep that up and we might manage round three after all."

He feels John's lips twitch upwards from where they've gone back to mouthing the line of his jaw. "It's been," he says, "a hundred thirty," between, "days since I," kisses, "Ascended. I'd be more surprised if we couldn't."

"Don't remind me," Rodney mutters darkly.

John pulls back at this, choosing to collapse into a wriggling ball of laughter beside him on the bed rather than continue the 'very' interesting thing his tongue had been starting to do at the join of his neck. "You're the one," he gasps when he can finally string two words together, "who wanted to wait until we could both get off to do anything."

"Well sorry if I'd rather our sex life be a two-way street," he protests, face heating up.

(John had offered- Well, he'd offered a lot of things while he'd still be working through his Tactile Dysfunction - but the idea of using John that way had just felt wrong. He was Rodney's lover, not some kind of rent boy. If they were going to have sex, both of them were going to or neither would. Even if the wait had nearly killed him.)

"I wouldn't have offered if I didn't want to."

"I know."

John hums contentedly. "Still, even better than I remembered."

"Oh? We grading ourselves now?"

"You're right. Probably a bad idea to start that. I mean, I'd give us a high eight, low nine for execution-"

Rodney slaps his shoulder.

John's smile just widens. "-but we'd barely scrape a four for difficulty."

He doesn't know whether to laugh or be outraged. He settles on the latter. "A four!"

"We could go for a seven and-" he stops mid-sentence as both their radios start beeping furiously. With a great sigh, John rolls over and plucks both off the bedside table. "This is Sheppard," he says into his, tossing Rodney his own. "You can't be serious."

Chuck's voice is already coming over the other end by the time Rodney gets his in his ear, "...so, Sir. Colonel Carter specifically requested his help. The SGC assures us that, regardless of the outcome, Doctor McKay will be back on Atlantis in less than a day."

"Help with what?" Rodney asks, already rolling out of bed - the blissful, San Francisco king-sized bed John had somehow convinced one of the Athosians on the mainland to make for them; what it lacks in prescription memory foam it makes up for with forty-nine square feet of feathery softness - and padding over to the crate full of clothes they've not gotten around to unpacking yet. Which is to say, all of them.

"Your sister."

"What about my sister?"

"I don't know the details, Sir, but apparently she's having difficulty securing her assistance with the Matter Bridge project."

"Of course she is," Rodney sighs, digging to the very bottom of the crate in search of civilian clothes that still fit. "I'll be there in fifteen." He yanks his radio back out and tosses it towards the bed. "Guess I'm going to get to try out that shower tonight after all."

John comes up behind him and pushes him towards the bathroom door. "Go ahead. I'll sort through this mess."

Rodney smiles tiredly at him. It's one o'clock in the morning local time and he'd had a long day 'before' they decided to christen their new quarters, so perhaps there's a bit too much honesty in his voice when he says, "Best boyfriend ever," meaning every word.

"Go," John repeats, lighting up like he's said something far more deep and meaningful than the simple truth. "Shower. The sooner you leave, the sooner we can pick up where we left off."

* * *

"So," Jeannie says when the shock has worn off somewhat, "the Lost City of Atlantis is real?"

"Yes. It was built by a race of people we call Ancients, most of whom abandoned it many thousands of years ago," Sam tells her matter-of-factly, taking a second cupcake. "We discovered it's location just over two years ago. Your brother was part of the first group to gate over."

"'Gate'?"

"The Ancients also left behind a network of devices that allow us to create artificial wormholes and travel to distant parts of the galaxy almost instantaneously.

We call them Stargates. Thus, gating."

"Please," she snorts, crossing the kitchen to get to the coffee maker, "artificial wormholes are about as likely as teleportation or time travel."

"Yes, well... The Ancients were an exceptionally advanced society. Along their other inventions is something we call a Zero Point Module, which is a source of incredible energy that works by extracting vacuum energy from an artificial region of space-time until it reaches maximum entropy."

"Which is why you need my proof," Jeannie ventures. "How do you take your coffee?"

"Black's fine. And, actually, no. Your brother came up with a means to recharge dead ZPMs earlier this year. The problem is that they're incredibly rare devices. Between Earth and Atlantis we only have five, which sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. And that's where your proof comes in. If we can find some way to generate zero point energy without having to rely on ZPMs, we'd finally have a secure source of energy with which to defend ourselves."  
Jeannie sets a UBC mug in front of Sam. "Defend ourselves? Defend ourselves from what? Aliens?" she laughs.

"Yes."

"Oh," she says soberly, taking a sip of her own coffee.

"It's a lot to take in, I know. But believe me, if you agree to help us, you'd be helping to save a lot of lives. The enemies we face... They want nothing more than to destroy this planet and all that we hold dear. I understand how you must feel about the military, but you have to understand that there are billions of lives at stake. We can defend ourselves with what resources we already have, but, with your help, we can do so with less risk to human lives."

"The calculus of war, huh?"

"Pretty much."

Jeannie sighs. "Alright. I'll do it. I'll help." It makes her feel dirty, the thought of making something to perpetuate the war machine, but if it saves lives...

"Thank you, Mrs. Miller. Believe me when I say you're doing the galaxy a great service."

"How long would I be gone?"

"A month. Two at the most," Sam informs her, pulling out her cell phone. "I know you need to pack and say goodbye to your family. Can you be ready by six o'clock local time?"

Jeannie nods, not trusting her voice. Six o'clock. That's just over four hours to get ready.

"Good. I'll send someone to pick you up then. Oh, and thanks for the cupcakes," the Colonel says before seeing herself out, leaving Jeannie sitting among the trappings of a life she could never look at the same way again.

* * *

**a/n: **First thing's first, this was hard to start. Secondly, Jeannie is proving to be a lot tougher to write than I'd anticipated. She draws EVERYTHING out, and so I got nowhere near as far as I'd intended with this installment. Thirdly, this is probably the last story I finish for the AJ 'Verse for a while, as I'm shipping out on the 12th and will have no internet access until mid May at the earliest. Fourthly, I was bored today, so Iohannes & Rodney's new quarters can be seen here. Fifthly, "Angelus" means "Angel" in Latin.  
Oh yes, and six, I think this might be the closest to actual R scene I've ever written.


	2. Pars Dua

Angelus  
An Ancient!John Story

* * *

Pars Dua

* * *

"So," Rodney says, gesturing tiredly at the Gate Room as the wormhole disconnects behind his sister, "this is Atlantis. Welcome. Salutations. Pleasantries, et cetera, and so on and so forth. I know you've probably got a million questions, which is only to be expected, but I've not slept in like two days and it's got to be about midnight your time, so how about we find out where your guest quarters are and pick the explanations up in a couple hours or so?"

Jeannie nods silently beside him, her eyes almost as big as her yawn.

"Good," he tells her, yawning himself, and drags her up the Gate Room stairs to find out where John's decided they're putting his sister up for the month or so she'll be here. With any luck, it'll be somewhere far, far from their new suite and, with even greater luck, somewhere she can keep out of trouble until he's had time to explain to her all the things she needs to know about the Pegasus galaxy. That's all he asks.

* * *

Jeannie wakes up slowly, in the lazy Sunday morning way. The bed is soft and the blankets are just the right kind of warm, and if it wasn't for the lemon-coloured light pouring through the gauzy white curtains, she'd gladly drift back to sleep. As it is, it's a small miracle she's been allowed to sleep in this long. It may be the weekend and Kaleb may have the day off, but-

It's not the weekend, she remembers. It's only Thursday, meaning Kaleb has his early class to teach. So unless by some hereto unheard of miracle she's managed to sleep through him getting ready for the day 'and' Madison's demands for breakfast, something strange is going on.

She opens her eyes.

Make that something seriously strange.

She's in a long, narrow room she doesn't recognise. Dark bookshelves completely line the opposite wall and most of the upper portion of the one her bed is pushed flush against. What free wall space there is is painted a cheery cream that goes well the floorboards, as is the ceiling. An ocean breeze is drifts through the open windows. She can just make out a pair of low, male voices talking in the next room.

"...for five hours. You'll never fall asleep tonight if you don't get up now," presses the first, his voice just side of familiar.

"Who says I 'want' to sleep tonight?" the second asks suggestively and- and- God, it's 'Mer'. It's her 'brother'. And she thinks she could've gone her whole life without ever hearing him use that tone, thank you very much, and-

Jeannie remembers where she is now. She's in her brother's guest room in the Lost City of Atlantis, which hasn't been as lost as it's been made out to be for several years now. It's just been on another planet. In another galaxy. Which apparently is possible.

The first - John - laughs, deeply and warmly. "That's up to you, buddy. But I figure you'll want dinner either way and they start serving in half-an-hour, so..."

"Alright, alright, I'm up." Mer groans. "You wake Jeannie yet?"

"She's the next McKay on my list."

Taking this as her cue, Jeannie slides out of bed - more of an oversized daybed built into the wall, really - and pulls on her robe. Now that she thinks about it, she's starving. She's not had anything since those cupcakes this afternoon. Yesterday. Several hours ago. God, what time is it here anyway? How does timekeeping even work on an alien planet? Do they still use a twenty-four hour clock or...?

There's a weird chime at her door and a hesitant, "Jeannie?"

"Come in," she calls.

John does just that, smiling charmingly at her. "Hey. You're awake. Good. It's almost dinnertime, if you're hungry. I'm not sure how much of it vegetarian, but

I'm sure we can rustle you up something."

"What time is it?"

"1907," he tells her without even looking at his watch, choosing instead to use his hands to spin around the chair from the desk tucked into one corner and sit it it, backwards. "Lantea - that's the name of the planet, by the way - has a twenty-eight hour rotation on it's axis. It's got a three hundred thirteen day rotation around it's sun, Igerna, though, so our calendar and Terra's match up fairly closely. Though it is spring here now; I understand that throws some people."

"I see," Jeannie says faintly, sitting back down on the bed. "I'm having a hard time believing this is real."

"I'm told that it's a lot to take in all at once. I've never understood why the SGC doesn't just come out and tell people about it myself, but that's not my decision to make. Unfortunately."

"Exactly! Something like this, it must be almost impossible to keep secret."

"You'd think, but what do I know?"

"How'd you take it, when you found out? I'm assuming they didn't just throw you through the Stargate and expect you to pick it up as you went along like they've done for me."

John's eyebrows lift almost comically in surprise. "You mean nobody told you?"

Curious, "Tell me what?"

"I'm just saying, it's usually the first thing they mention. Normally it's like they can't shut up about it. Drives me up a wall, really, but it's not like I can do anything to stop them, so..."

"John, in the last twenty-four hours I've learned out that the Lost City of Atlantis is real, that it was built by aliens, that those aliens also made space travel by artificial wormhole possible, and that my brother has been living in a different galaxy for two plus years. I don't think there's much you could say at this point that could surprise me."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," he says lightly, plucking at the laces of the strange, old-fashioned bracers he's wearing. Then, eyes turning briefly heavenwards, "Alright. Here goes nothing," John sighs,. "Y'know those 'aliens,' the ones who built Atlantis, the ones the Terrans call Ancients?"

Jeannie fails to see where this is going. "Yeah?"

"Well," he rubs the back of his neck awkwardly, "I'm kinda one of them. The last one, really. My name's not really John, it's Iohannes Ianiedus Licinus Pastor, but you can go on calling me John. Most people do. Or Sheppard, but that's more of a title actually than a real translation of my name."

"I'm sorry, what?" she baulks, trying to process this new piece of information and failing utterly.

"I'm not human. Not as you understand them, at least."

"You look human."

He shrugs. "My people seeded humanoid life throughout the universe. It was kinda a thing we did for a while. You guys evolved to look like us."

Jeannie wants to think of another reason why what John's saying is impossible. She's been emailing him for months; he slept in her house. She's certain she'd have picked up on it a long time ago if John was really an alien. But she can't. It's absolutely absurd, but then again so is everything about this situation. She has no choice but to believe.

"And how many of you are there in Atlantis?"

"Just me. Like I said, I'm the last one."

"What happened to all the others?"

"It's kinda long story."

"I'd like to hear it."

One side of John's mouth twitches upwards. "Over dinner, maybe? The mess starts serving in a couple of minutes and you're bound to be hungry, so..." He rises out of the chair. "If you wanna take a shower first, there's no rush."

Jeannie can't help but smiling back at him as she pushes herself once again off the bed. "Mer might argue otherwise."

"He'll survive somehow, I'm sure."

* * *

"You bastard!" Jeannie says, slapping his arm the moment she's within reach.

"What?" he yelps indignantly.

"You could have told me your boyfriend is an alien."

Oh. That. Rodney'd known he'd forgotten something last night. He's just glad it's nothing actually important. "Technically he's not an alien. He was born on this planet, we weren't. So, if you think about it, we're the aliens here."

She hits him again.

"Is the violence really necessary?" he asks, rubbing the spot and skulking down the hall, towards the room John's claimed as his office.

"You know what I mean," she reiterates, unapologetic.

Rodney sighs. "I couldn't tell you before. I mean, without knowing about the Stargates, would you even have believed me if I'd tried?"

"And what about last night? Maybe at some point between 'oh, by the way, space travel is real' and 'here's where you'll be staying' you could have mentioned that your live-in boyfriend is a real, live Ancient. Would that really have been so hard?"

"It kind of slipped my mind."

"How does the fact that your boyfriend isn't human 'slip your mind'?"

"I don't know, maybe because it doesn't really matter? He's still the same guy you met last year, just with a slightly different background. And," he sighs again, wishing that he'd taken the time to unpack the coffee maker last night after all, "can we not use the term 'boyfriend'? I'd rather not have my love life confused with more after-school drama than absolutely necessary."

Jeannie, naturally, continues on her own tangent, as if his own part in the conversation is only incidental. "It's not that I 'care' that he's an alien. Male, female, human, alien, robot - I don't care 'who' you date, I'd just like to know these things."

"I'm sorry, but remind me: when, exactly, did it become 'your' business who 'I' date?"

"It's not, but-"

He snaps his fingers. "Exactly. It's not."

"Meredith!"

"Jeanne, I'm thirty-eight years old. I've been sleeping with men since I was an undergrad. It wasn't your business then and it's not your business now, even if all of them were aliens." Rodney pauses. That had made a lot more sense in his head. He presses on anyway, adding. "And, seriously, you thought 'robot' was actually an option?"

She throws her hands into the air. "Well how was I supposed to know it wasn't? I only just learned aliens actually exist twelve hours ago. Forgive me for going ahead and assuming everything else vaguely 'Star Trek' is real too!" She lets her hands fall loudly to her side. "Good god, Mer, I've been arguing about values of the parameters in the Drake Equation with an alien." She slumps against the packing crate blocking the rest of the hallway. "I've been arguing with an alien for five months that his assumptions for the number of inhabitable and inhabited planets was far too high. That even the original solution was overly optimistic."

"Yeah, well..." he says somewhat awkwardly, not quite sure what to do now that his sister's stopped shouting. Rodney settles for shoving his hands into his pockets and continuing, "Drake couldn't take the Ancients' penchant for terraforming or panspermia into account, so it's not like he could get an accurate equation at all. Though I suppose that, had the Ancients not decided to interfere, the Drake Equation probably would've had it right."

Which is, naturally, when the source of all this trouble decides to poke his head out of his office. "Hey, remind me to bring that up next time Ganos decides to pop in again."

Rodney frowns. "Is that likely?" He's never met the woman, but he sincerely doubts he could ever even be civil to the person responsible for John's current Ascended state.

"She's my probation officer," John shrugs, stepping around the packing crates to join them in the hall. "Once a year check-ins are mandatory. Not sure if she counted her stunt with Doctor Jackson though. Hope so. The woman's a meretrix if there ever was one."

He can practically hear Jeannie blink. "Probation officer?"

"Long story."

"That's what you said earlier," she points out petulantly.

Rodney snorts. "The longest."

* * *

**a/n: **This is it. This is the end - for now. I leave for Basic tomorrow morning (see here for details) and must leave this story until I get back, sometime around mid-May. I really wanted to finish this fic before I left, but RL issues (and Jeannie herself) prevented that. So, this is the natural place to stop with what I have, and, with luck, I'll be back soon to finish it (and the rest of the series) off.  
Thank you for all your love, support, and reviews for the journey so far.


	3. Pars Tria

Angelus  
Pars Tria

* * *

Jeannie knocks tentatively on the door of her brother's bedroom. It's quiet in there now, but she hasn't spent two weeks in her brother's apartment, sharing a bedroom wall with Mer and his live-in boyfriend, without learning to be weary of such things. If it wasn't for the fact that her brother is one of the involved parties, she'd be jealous (her own honeymoon period with Kaleb cut rather short by Madison's birth).

Mostly, though, she just wishes they'd be quieter.

Still, she knocks. Quietly. Tentatively. And when she doesn't hear an immediate shout for her to go away, she waves her hand over the door controls.

They open slowly.

"Mer?"

There's a low grunt.

"Mer?" she tries again.

"I swear, if this is anything less than the end of the world, I will hide the pieces so deep even your own mother won't notice you've gone missing."

"Mom died twelve years ago, you jerk."

She hears a long, muffled groan.

"What do you want, Jeannie?"

"Can we talk?"

Mer groans again, barely lifting his face out of his pillow. "Jeannie, I've been up for fifty-two hours straight and finally have a chance to try to sleep for six hours - max, if I'm lucky - without being bothered by incompetent Gate techs or conference attendees asking how to work the showers. So, this better be important, or, so help me God, sister or not, I will not be responsible for my actions."

Jeannie can't help it: she rolls her eyes. "You're such a child."

"I'm the Chief Science Office of the coolest, most advanced city in the universe. I can act however the hell I want.

"Real mature, Meredith."

Mer finally lifts his head off the pillow and shifts around to face her. "Again, Chief Science Officer. Atlantis. So, what do you want, Jeannie? I'm tired."

Jeannie takes another few steps into the room, pauses, then takes a few more. Now that she's here, she's not entirely sure how to go about this. Or if she really should go about it at all.

No, she takes that back. She 'has' to do this. It's her job as Mer's sister, even if they've never really been close, and what closeness they've gained in the last year or so has mostly been because of John and not any real action on Mer's part (or, admittedly, her own).

"It's about John," she says after a deep, bracing breath.

Mer sits straight up, the blanket pooling around his waist. Luckily, he's dressed, still in his rumpled Expedition uniform, sans jacket. "What about John," he asks, sounding far more awake than he had moments before.

"It's about you and John, actually."

"I'm listening," he replies testily.

"It's not," she broaches slowly, "that I don't 'like' John. Far from it. He's amazing and you two are brilliant together - I've never seen you happier. But..."

"But?"

"It's just..." she plunges in. "Carson was telling me the other day about what happened to him - to John, not himself, that is - and how he's Ascended now and..."

"Go on," he says more testily still, crossing his arms tightly over his chest.

"It's just, are you sure it's the smartest thing to do - not getting involved with an alien, I'll leave that up to your expertise," Jeannie adds quickly, remembering their argument of two weeks ago, the aftermath of which very nearly had lasted all of her first week. "I mean with someone who can't die, or age, or isn't really even flesh and blood."

"We've worked through it."

"For now. But what happens when you start to get old."

Mer rolls his eyes. "Please. John's got this whole enlightened, omnisexual, sapiosexual thing going on. If anyone's the shallow one in this relationship, it's me. By like a parsec."

"Okay, okay," she backtracks, holding up her hands unthreateningly. "I'm not saying John'll leave you. God, the guy is head over heels for you - anyone can see it. It's just... how will 'you' feel when you start to grow older and he stays the same age forever?"

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

Daringly, Jeannie takes a few more steps into the room. Then, more daringly still, she perchs on the edge of John and Mer's (frankly embarrassingly) huge bed.

"I don't want to tell you what do do here. Hell, I've been here fifteen days and I'm still completely out of my depth. All I know is, as good as you two are now, I just can't see how it can possibly work out in the long term between you. It's not just that he's Ascended and you're not, it's everything else too - this conference," the one that had started not long after she'd arrived, for which delegates from half-a-dozen different planets have shown up to discuss the charter for the galactic confederation they are setting out to build, and which has taken up most of John's time - and a good part of Mer's - ever since, "and the fact that they're trying to make him the god-damn emperor of this entire galaxy.

"No, actually, forget that, you could probably work through that as well. It's the fact that this galaxy considers him to be their one and true 'God'. A 'god', Meredith. How is that supposed to work? A god and a mortal? 'Cause that never words out in the myths-"

"My life is not a myth."

"You live in The Lost City of Atlantis. You're dating the last member of the race that created humanity. You gate to other planets on an almost daily basis."

Mer uncrosses his arms. "Alright. maybe it has some fantastical aspects, I'll give you that, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to start taking life advice from Greek legends. Especially when three fourths of them are based off of goa'uld politics."

"Meredith," she sighs, "I'm not saying that it can't work out. Maybe it can. Any fool off the street can see he's in love with you."

"We're gay, Jeannie, but we're not 'that' gay."

"He looks at you like you hung the moon and stars," she tells him dryly, "and, if you asked him, he'd probably tell you that you make the sun shine too."

"Not. That. Gay," Mer repeats, more amused than genuinely bothered.

"Whatever. I'll I'm saying is he loves you, but I don't know if that's enough."

Sighing, "What are you saying, Jeannie? That I should brake up with him 'cause it 'might' not work out?"

"No, I'm-"

"We've worked through our problems. John didn't want to move in together at first, but we worked through it. He Ascended and lost his corporeality, but we worked through it. God or not, Emperor or not, we can work through it. We've beaten worse odds, we can beat these as well."

"Alright," she says, standing. "Alright. I just wanted to put that out there."

"Well, now you have," Mer huffs, flopping back onto the bed.

Jeannie bites her lip. "Okay," she says quietly, heading for the door. "I'm going to bed then. I'll be up for a little while longer, though, if you want to talk."

"I won't."

"Okay then." The door snaps shut behind her irritatedly. "I'm just trying to look out for him," she whispers to the ceiling. "I'm just trying to look out for the both of them."

The air filters clatter softly above her. Maybe the city, unarguably sentient, understands. Despite everything, she loves her brother. She loves John too. She just wants what's best for them both, but she has no idea how a relationship could ever work out between a god and a mortal. Not even if they're John and Mer.


End file.
